I finally got around to reading Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. It was published in 2009 and consists of his Terry Lectures on Religion and Science, given at Yale University. In fact, it’s a direct attack on the arguments of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, whom he has renamed “Ditchkins.” Eagleton is quite humorous and uses his wit effectively.

What’s perhaps most effective about the work is that he agrees with many of Ditchkins’ arguments against religion, but nevertheless takes them to task for their “faith” in rationality. Aside from the humor, which occasionally had me bursting out in laughter, there is a serious argument here. Eagleton links Christian theology to Marxism and uses both to level criticism at capitalism, postmodernism, and neoconservatism. He concludes:

The distinction between Ditchkins and those like myself comes down in the end to one between liberal humanism and tragic humanism. There are those like Ditchkins who hold that if we can only shake off a poisonous legacy of myth and superstition, we can be free. This in my own view is itself a myth, though a generous-spirited one. Tragic humanism shares liberal humanism’s vision of the free flourishig of humanity; but it holds that this is possible only by confronting the very worst. (pp. 168-169)

Eagleton, whose own religious convictions remain unclear throughout the work, has some powerful things to say about the New Testament idea of following Jesus:

The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don’t end up dead, it apears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body. Those who do not see this dreadful image of a tortured innocent as the truth of history are likely to adopt some bright-eyed superstition such as the dream of untrammeled human progress…  (pp. 27-28)

The chapter on “Faith and Reason” especially deserves close attention. He works with Charles Taylor, Badiou, other philosophers, as well as Thomas Aquinas, to show that rationality itself requires certain prior commitments.